Wouldn't he be the first president to have a foreign born spouse? I know in the modern error he would be Rocket River
I lived in Russian-speaking places and know some. In English, the Cold War term was usually rendered "useful idiot." I mostly know it as an allusion to western apologists of Stalin like Paul Robeson. If you want to use the phrase in Russian, you are better off using the right alphabet the way St. Cyril intended it: полезный дурак, especially if your intent is to show off and be true to it's original use.
Not sure what bothers me more, the red-baiting or the irrational Trump defenders. Melania Trump was a working model from Slovenia in her early 20s with the IQ of carrot when Communism collapsed. Not exactly the profile for a mole.And Yugoslavia also didn't exactly have the best relationship with Russia even during the Cold War. It's really, really a stretch to insinuate she was a KGB operative, especially since she didn't even make it to the US until the mid-90s. She was about as likely to be working for the KGB in 1997 as the Houston Oilers were to be Super Bowl contenders that year, you know, since those organizations no longer actually existed. The efforts to cast Putin as a mad, depraved boogeyman to score political points are poorly guided, IMHO, but they sure seem to work. Russians are second only to Arabs in the Hollywood Bad Guy Mustache Curling Villain Index, since as we know, all Russians are cold-blooded emotionless killers who are either ruthless secret agents or mafioso, or manipulative femme fatales. And if there's one thing Americans are great at, it's being scared shitless of foreigners. Putin is a strongman that oppresses his own people, but he's a rational actor and a pragmatist when it comes to diplomacy. When he complains about American duplicity, he's very clear about why. The rift in US-Russian relations both during and before Putin goes back to pre-Soviet times, and the US is at least as much to blame for it. I think Secretary Rice, for all of her faults, "got" Russia and Russians better than any before or after her, and even she couldn't prevent the poor decisions made by the Bush administration that widened a rift that I think was entirely avoidable, and that includes the aggression in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine that came later during an equally clueless Obama administration that's reluctant to admit that those things happened as a response to what was perceived in Russia as a challenge to Russia's zone of control by interlopers. Putin would tell you that with that reasoning, the US should be apologizing to Daniel Ortega, the Castros, and Grenada, and tearing up the Monroe Doctrine, which elicits a hell of a lot of applause outside the NATO nuclear umbrella. But that discussion is beyond and separate from the scope of Trump's useful idiocy, which he absolutely is guilty of. The man knows even less about Putin and Russia than the average uneducated American that watches RT because they bash Obama.
So as long as I tell you why I'm raping your teenage daughter and can provide a cogent, rational explanation for my actions, it's OK to do it? The real problem is if I don't communicate fully my grievances against your family? BTW, ISIS is very clear about their grievances, and are very rational about achieving their goals, too. The problem is that American goals and ISIS goals are inherently incomparable. There is no situation where both groups can simultaneously achieve what they want. A global caliphate can not coexist with personal freedoms and religious tolerance for everybody.
Not at all. The "why" matters only because so many Americans are asking it because they seem unaware of why, especially since they are the same ones who have been justifying, if we follow your metaphor, the rape of someone else's daughters for more than half a century. Like I said -- Russian-American relations are a bit beyond the scope of the thread, so I feel dirty oversimplifying it like that.
Ask the Poles, Czechs, Latvians, Estonians, and Lithuanians who's been raping who for the better part of the last century. I think they'd have a different view. Putin getting upset because we are providing protection to Eastern Europeans who want protection is like the religious guy who says gay marriage violates his religious freedoms because he has to look at the gay people being gay. If Russia wants Poles to not run to someone else for protection, they shouldn't try and lean on them as much as they do. Should we should abandon Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam because we are upsetting China? Should those countries get the hell away from Venezuela and Cuba because they are "ours"? The concept of "spheres of influence" is a worn out 19th century colonial concept, about as relevant as slavery. No country "belongs" to another country. If Russia wants to pour money into Venezuela to buy their love, more power to them. They've already tried sending warships to Cuba and Venezuela and it didn't upset anybody outside of some excitable congresspeople.
I'm not a rapist. I don't condone the "rape" of Baltic states any more than I do Cuba, Nicaragua, or Grenada. I have a lot of friends in Ukraine and Russia and I'm quite aware of how shitty the whole situation is and I'm not an apologist for Mr. Putin. I believe that American diplomacy failed and it could have prevented it if US leaders better understood Russia and the mentality of leaders like Putin instead of sticking to the Truman Doctrine into the 21st Century. Again, I don't want to derail the thread talking about US-Russian relations.
Given that our NATO Intelligence allies are reporting that there are infact meetings between Trump advisors and Putin henchmen and that it seems likely that a Trump victory will mean the lost of Eastern European states - people really need to wake the F up.
NATO is an Imperialist institution for the USA? That is an interesting take. That is the kind of talking point I'd expect to come out of some Soviet political commissar's mouth at the height of the Cold War. Is there any kind of association between two countries that isn't a form of imperialism in your mind? I have to say, it is a little surreal seeing a room full of John Birch Society types posting the same type of stuff that normally comes from glynch. Strange bedfellows.
Well, I think you have to take a step back and realize that a decent % of your partners in "dialogue" here might wonder who John Birch is and if they missed that round of WWE. It's all just tribalism, in the end. If 24 hour "news" + the internet have done anything to humanity, and they have, they have literally grown the amygdala. That's useful if we're trying to survive under our ancestral trees using just our hands and our wits. It's a pretty bad prescription for dealing with a modern, complex, technological state with the capacity for self-annihilation. On a separate note, to Deji McGever, I was totally joking about Melania being programmed for Putin, but it was interesting to see it taken seriously here. Another sign of the times I guess. Cheers.
The Birchers are pretty mundane in the their views as compared to the Trump faithful, IMHO. I'd say the classic positions have become mainstream GOP stuff today. Sorry if my sarcasm meter is broken, B-Bob. I hear stranger things every day.
No prob, Deji, and you weren't the main earnest respondent at any rate. But comrades, I bring good news! Never mind other newspapers, Trump has picked up a great bolshy endorsement, oh my brothers! "My colleagues at these channels completely back Trump and show all the bad things about Clinton." HINT: in the country of origin, media does not endorse you... you endorse media!
Writing about this election is gonna keep future historians and political scientists buys for decades... (I hope.)
Wow. Something intelligent about Russia. Most of the folks on this forum, including allgeged progressives are startlingly willing to sign up to waste trillions on a new Cold War and probably kill many in proxy wars. We can only hope they are not up for nuclear war against the "Russkies".
Is this why Trump has been blaring a new song at this speech rallies...."Nobody's Fool" by Cinderella.
